


Only Time

by blackkat



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom, X-Men
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mourning, Moving On, PTSD, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 15:01:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry deals with his grief by running. Scott obsesses over where he last saw Jean. They're both a little broken, but all they need is time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Consider it declaimed.

_Who can say where the road goes,_

 _Where the day flows_

 _Only time._

 _And who can say if your love grows_

 _As your heart chose?_

 _Only time._

 _~Enya,_ Only Time

Harry has been wandering for so long that he no longer remembers what it is _not_ to wander. He takes comfort in the constant motion, the eternal drifting from one place to another, which lets him focus only on the present, and push all other matters back into the past where they belong. It had been hard, at first, very hard, but Harry hadn't been able to stay in the Wizarding World any longer. There had been too many deaths, too many losses. Even the Weasley family, with Fred's death and Bill's scarring, haven't lost as much as Harry personally.

That thought, in itself, is incredibly selfish, but Harry can no longer bring himself to care. Not now, when he is entirely done being selfless, after he has killed the Dark Lord, after he has spent so much of his life facing Voldemort and scraping by just barely alive. Voldemort's madness was something overwhelming, enveloping, devouring, and Harry has only barely escaped being completely consumed by it.

 _Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you_ , Nietzsche had written. When Hermione had said that to him, soon after the end of the war, Harry had laughed until he was nearly sick.

There had been a period, a few months after Voldemort's defeat, when Harry had truly thought that he would fall into madness and not be able to claw his way back out of the morass. His sanity is still on somewhat shaky ground, uncertain in the face of large crowds, or loud noises, or fast movements. Mild PTSD, someone who knew about such things had called it. The name doesn't matter much, though, in the end. Harry is dealing with it, and that's all there is to, and nothing else can be done. The Wizarding World has a dearth of psychiatrists, and even the Boy-Who-Lived can't break the Statute of Secrecy for something as small and unimportant as the occasional nightmare or panic attack and a bit of twitchiness. Hell, Moody would have laughed him out of the office, probably, and then cast a few extra spells at him for good measure. _Constant vigilance_ doesn't include jumping at shadows and flinching whenever someone passes too close.

There are too many reminders back in England, too many things that reflect the ravages of a madman's twisted vision of the future. Too many graves, and too much weeping, and far, far too much mourning for Harry to be able to recover in peace. He flees, just as soon as he is able to pry himself out of the grasp of well wishers and would-be family—and on the list of Worst Mistakes Harry Ever Made, promising Ginny that he would come back to her is probably in the top ten somewhere—leaving England, leaving everyone he knew. Ron and Hermione accept it, even if they don't understand, and after two years they've finally stopped asking him when he's planning to come back.

He isn't, but he's never told them that explicitly.

So he travels. France, Germany, Russia, India, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, Morocco, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, America, all the way up to the most deserted, unwelcoming areas of North America.

It's cold there, and empty, and lonely, and all he had thought he needed.

Except that it isn't, that it can't be, and that just about breaks his damned heart.

* * *

Britain is hardly alone in its study of magic, and Harry loves the distinctions he sees in the different part of the world. It's eye-opening, too. What is Dark in England is normal, or vice versa, and there are _so many variants_ , so many tiny shifts that change _everything_. Harry's never been a scholar, never been a bookworm like Hermione, and never thought of himself as particularly gifted in anything except attracting the very worst kinds of trouble, but even _he_ can appreciate the huge range of magic there is to learn in the rest of the world. And why _not_ learn it, if he's there and has the time and nothing else to do?

The Chinese conjure with herbs and diagrams. The Australian aborigines use chanting and rituals. The Indians gravitate towards Buddhism in their magic, which is interesting, because Harry has never thought of the _why_ of using magic before, and Buddhism is good for thinking. In the Middle East it's wind and sand magic, hot against his skin and by turns scorching and freezing, just like the deserts. African wizards summon human and animal spirits—necromancy, of a sort, but _fascinating_ in its differences.

The rest of Europe is depressing similar to Britain, though Harry knows he should have expected that after his encounters with Durmstrang and Beauxbatons. They're all divided between Light and Dark, and that's just… _horrible_. It's the makings of another war, and since Harry is already being selfish, he's decided that he simply won't fight in the next one. And there _will_ be another one, of that he's certain. In a world where prejudices are so deeply ingrained that a half-blood could use the purebloods to all but start a genocide, there will always be another war. This one Harry will stay out of. In this one, the Wizarding World is going to be on its own.

So he doesn't go back to Britain as he had originally planned. Instead, he starts at Cape Horn and works his way up through South America, through places where blood magic is as common as a Summoning Charm in England and the Old Gods are still fed on the hearts and blood of enemies. Then up through the highlands, where the famous ruins of Machu Picchu take his breath away and hide a thriving world that Muggles will never see, high among the Andes. He almost stays, because he's never been anywhere so empty and lonely and free and cultured, all at once, but it's still too much.

So he goes on, through Mexico and then across the border, through the Great Plains where Native American shamans take on the forms of animals as easily as breathing—not Animagi, but something different, something _more_. He finds that he respects them more than he has any others he's visited, because they can _see_ their culture fading and falling away around them, but keep on nevertheless, strong and steady. And they welcome him with only a small amount of mistrust, but teach him their secrets, and when Harry leaves, it is on the wings of a crow, then the paws of a coyote, and then the swift hooves of a deer.

But Harry is still fleeing, is still helpless in the face of sudden noises or unexpected touches, sees the faces of those who died every time he closes his eyes and tries to sleep. They drag at him, pull him down like the Inferi would have done in that cold, dark cave, and hold him in he darkness of his own mind as he drowns, drowns, drowns, and cannot wake.

He pushes it aside. He jokes and laughs. He only drowns quietly, when no one else is watching.

Alaska is empty, though—very empty, less than one person per square mile, statistically, and in reality most of those are concentrated in the cities and towns—and Harry doesn't have to worry about staying in the towns, not when he can become a fox and hunt rabbits, or a stag and eat bark, or a bear and eat fish. He can't keep any form for too long or he risks losing himself, everything that makes him _Harry_ , but sometimes…

Sometimes, he thinks that he wouldn't mind losing _Harry_ very much at all.

Still, he's responsible. He walks as a human more than he runs as an animal, and uses Heating Charms to ward off the bitter cold, and revels in mile after mile of empty quiet, with just him to break it.

And then there isn't, and he watches a man with red sunglasses walk towards a lake where he will die.

* * *

Harry is stupid. Harry has a saving-people thing that borders on ritualistically suicidal. Harry also needs to stop thinking about himself in third person, because it convinces no one of his sanity—least of all himself.

But, because he's Harry bloody Potter, he has to do _something_.

He knows about mutants. It's hard not to, with all of the ruckus the Muggles are kicking up about it. America seems to be the hottest area, figuratively speaking, but then, America has always had a thing for big, visible civil rights battles done in bloody, terrible ways. It's a little heartening, though, to know that mutants can be even somewhat accepted, because it gives Harry hope for wizards someday coming forward. Not that that will happen any time soon, but it's a possibility for the future.

Moreover, being in America all but guarantees crossing paths with at least one mutant, and Harry's crossed paths with several. First there was the dark-eyed gambler in New Orleans, and then a young man with wings who was in a bad way, and then a shapeshifter woman with blue skin and golden eyes who Harry caught mid-change in a men's bathroom (which was awkward, but still interesting, especially after Harry made it clear that he had no interest in her, uh, bouncy bits). So he's learned to recognize them by the way that they feel—one step away from wizards, which is even _more_ interesting, or would be if he had an interest in genetics and/or the wherewithal to study it.

But he doesn't, and he doesn't, and it's enough that mutants each feel a bit like kinetic energy thrumming under his skin, or the brush of feathers, or the ripple of scales sliding into a new form. He can see them, sense them, just the slightest bit and only if he's close enough, but it lets him look at this man—with his red glasses and brown hair and handsome face—and feel the burn of power like red kisses over his skin.

It also lets him feel the presence by the lake, like a Dementor—but this one _emits_ unhappiness, instead of drawing it out. It's also…hungry.

And the man—the mutant—has all the makings of a five-star meal.

Harry has no compunctions about letting the man think that he himself is a mutant—the American Magical Congress (their version of the British Ministry) actually encourages that, if at all possible. Also, the man might be more inclined to believe one of his kind than an unrelated stranger popping out of the bushes to tell him "Oh, that way lies madness."

Maybe without the King Lear reference, though. (Even is Shakespeare is good in all situations, sometimes it's just overkill.)

And he's right. He only _nearly_ gets fried when the sunglasses turn out not to be sunglasses at all, but a device for controlling a rather wicked mutation that lets the man shoot _lasers_ from his _eyes_.

In retrospect, perhaps darting out of the bushes and changing from a fox into a human _was_ a bit startling, even for a mutant.

Harry refocuses his attention on the feelings of death and doom coming from the lake that lies out of sight, thanks Merlin and Morgana that he's not having a bad day in PTSD terms, and picks himself up off the ground with a mildly affronted glare.

"You treat everyone who's trying to save you life like that?" he asks, because he's been wandering alone in the wilderness for a few months now, and his manners have been a casualty of the isolation—not that they were ever perfect to begin with, either.

The brown-haired man surveys him for a moment, and Harry can just see one eyebrow rise behind the visor. "Only when they pop out from behind bushes like demented monkeys," he returns, and there's an equal amount of mild affront in his voice.

"Too cold for monkeys," Harry points out, shaking his head. "I tried it, nearly lost my tail to frostbite within an hour. Alaska's too damned cold." He offers his hand, because he can and he hasn't lost _all_ of his manners, just most of them. "Harry. Now why are you walking to your death?"

Seeming slightly dazed, the man accepts the proffered hand and shakes it. "Scott. Cyclops. Death? What are you talking about?"

It takes Harry a second to sort out what's what in that—the mutants make it a tad confusing, what with their double names, and some only answer to one, and some answer to both, and some don't answer at all. But he's fairly certain that "death" pertained to his question, and wasn't a name. And if the man offered his human name first, it should be safe to use it. Or so Harry hopes. Scott is a nice name. It suits him.

"Yes, death," he affirms. "There's something there, and it feels rather cannibalistic. And I would know—I nearly ended up as a meal for cannibals once, they're never good news, so you might want to avoid that lake for the next hundred years or so. Just 'til the thing moves on."

Something suspiciously close to hope flickers across Scott's face, but Harry can't read him enough to be sure—he's never realized just how much a person's eyes convey, and how odd it is not to see that. But Scott doesn't pause to let him read much at all. Instead, he turns as though he is about to flee to the lake. "There's someone there? She's alive?"

Harry tightens his grip, dragging the man back a step as he tries to stride forward. "Hey there! Stop! I just told you there is, and I don't know who 'she' is but unless you're prepared to perform an exorcism on a being from a higher plane of existence, you can't go there. Whatever it is that's set up a nest there, it _will_ kill you. It would likely kill anyone at this point. It's mad. There's nothing you can do."

Since Harry was just gearing himself up for a long argument, it's rather surprising when Scott stops and seems to crumple in on himself, just a little bit. He sighs and steps back again. "From a higher plane of existence?" he asks. "It isn't human?"

 _It's complicated_ , Harry wants to say. Whatever is haunting the lake _might_ have been human at one point, but now it's more pure energy than anything else. He can _feel_ the grief and anger and power coming from the creature, knows that something real—like an interaction with a human—will unleash her on the world, and knows that he can't allow that. But _it's complicated_ is one of the worst brush-offs it's possible to give, and he won't do that to this tired, grieving man in front of him.

"Not anymore," he says. "Maybe once. Now it's not."

Scott presses one hand over his face, drawing in a ragged breath, and then straightens. His smile, when it comes, is barely there and slightly sardonic. "So she's really gone?"

Harry still doesn't know who 'she' is, but he knows loss when he sees it—and he's seen it far too often. Scott probably loved her, probably worshiped her and planned to spend the rest of his life with her, and how he's standing in the wreckage of all of those dreams, trying to move on when he doesn't have any reason to.

"Yes," he says softly, "I'm sorry."

He remembers the Resurrection Stone, lost to the Forbidden Forest, and his mind repeats, " _Oh, that way lies madness_."

Scott looks at them, and for a moment, all Harry knows is a strong, blinding empathy that all but subsumes him. This man is a fighter, a survivor, and if there was ever been anything Harry is good at, it's surviving. They're the same, that way, and for the first time since that kiss with Ginny by the Black Lake (lifetimes ago, and worlds away, and _still_ among the Top Fifteen Worst Mistakes Harry Ever Made), he feels the faintest stirrings of attraction.

 _Ah_ , Harry thinks with wry amusement. _Guess that means I'm bent, too._

It should probably be a surprise, but it's not.

He thinks Scott feels it, too, with the way he doesn't pull out of Harry's grip, but nearly leans against him, heavy like grief but unwilling to show it—not because he's a man, and man don't cry, but because tears are for when you finally let go, and he hasn't quite managed it yet.

Then he sighs and straightens up, sliding out of Harry's grasp, and turns to face him. "Then apparently I came all this way for nothing. Do you need a ride to somewhere, Harry? There's a haven for mutants back in New York, if you're interested."

Harry is interested, but he can't face civilization yet. He smiles and shakes his head, stepping back, away, retreating towards the cover of the trees once more. He'll ward this place, he decides, hide it from ever being found again. Plots and diagrams and symbols are already spinning through his head, slipping into longer chains and complex combinations that will hold the creature in check forever.

"Sorry," he says, "but I'm not ready yet. Maybe in a few months, or a year? I just…need some time."

On a whim, he stops. It's a mad idea, but Scott is here, and vivid, and very handsome, and Harry can feel the sense of loss clinging to him like a second skin. He draws in a breath and then darts closer, takes Scott's face between his hands, and kisses him. Once. Lightly. Gently.

"Stop grieving," he tells him with a smile, and this one is real. "Whoever 'she' is, if she really did love you, there's nothing she would want more than to see you happy. Trust that, and trust yourself to know when you've mourned enough."

Scott stares at him, startled, but then nods slowly, lifting one hand to press it over Harry's along the line of his cheek. "And you?" he asks. "When will it be enough with you?"

That's a painful question, but Harry accepts it, because it isn't right to ask someone else to do what he himself won't. And he _will_ do it, at some point. He just…hasn't yet.

"Maybe in a few months, or a year?" Harry repeats, and this time his smile is self-deprecating. "I just need a little while longer to put them all to rest. Give me time?"

He doesn't know why he's asking, why this man's answer means so much to him, but there's a connection between them that he can't shake off. Both marked, in their own way. Both wounded. Both waiting for something they haven't found yet. But maybe, just maybe, this encounter will give them what they're looking for.

Scott watches him for a few more moments, then nods once, slowly. "Time," he acknowledges, and Harry thinks that his eyes are smiling, even hidden as they are. "As much as you need, as long as it's not too much."

It's a promise, then.

And what is there for Harry to do but smile back at him? So he does just that, holds it for a brief moment, and then turns and lets the shape of a sleek grey wolf overtake his body as he hurtles back into the trees.

For the first time in a long while, "I need time," doesn't have the ring of "forever."


	2. Chapter 2

_Who can say why your heart sighs_

 _As your love flies,_

 _Only time_

 _And who can say why your heart cries_

 _When your love lies,_

 _Only time_

 _~Enya,_ Only Time

Harry is running. He has been running for a long while now.

Being so far north, among the endless forests and snowfields, makes it easier, as does running on four feet instead of two, but it is still running. He is still fleeing. _Nothing to fear, no reason to run_ , his mind says, but _run, run, run_ his heart says.

The latter is far easier to listen to than the former.

The dead come to him even in the day now, rising up before his eyes as though they are making one last, grasping attempt to cling to him before they are released. He sees Sirius in the shadows of the trees, Grim-shaped and accusing. Lupin stands at the edge of the tree line, sad and resigned to being forgotten. Fred is a pale shadow, only half-there without his twin. Lily and James walk hand in hand through the snow, their eyes full of rebuke that he could even think of putting them aside.

 _Time. As much as you need, as long as it's not too much,_ Scott tells him, a soft murmur, wind-like in his ears. He focuses on that, looks to the living instead of the dead, and runs past the ghosts that no longer have any hold on him, swift and free as a rangy grey wolf. He doesn't know where he's going, so long as it's _free_ , because that's how he feels now. There is no one, nothing to tell him that he cannot let go of them, sad and solemn and weary of grief as he is. He will never forget them—they _are_ him, they are what _made_ him—but again and again he hears those words from a man who has also lost.

 _As much as you need, as long as it's not too much_.

He keeps running, this time with a purpose, heading south in the daylight. Perhaps he could gauge his direction from the night sky, and run in the darkness, when he is less likely to encounter others, but he's not a navigator, barely passed Astronomy.

Stars have always just been stars to him.

Harry weeps for them, sometimes, when he is sitting in the dark of the wilderness and watching to moon drift overhead, weeps for those he has lost. Those the _world_ has lost, really, but he cares little for that. His parents are simple to step beyond, because he never really knew them, and the pain he feels is more a longing for what he has never had than any true grief. Sirius, too, who he knew only briefly, and who tended to see "James" more than "Harry." Lupin was the one who seemed closer to a father figure, with his wisdom and his chocolate and his worn robes, and he's harder. But in his death, at least, Harry cannot shoulder much blame. Lupin knew quite well—better than most—what he was doing in the battles, and kept fighting. Harry can't help but wish that he had been a coward, had drawn back when he had the opportunity, but he knows the werewolf wouldn't have dreamed of doing that. Not when there were lives on the line, when the woman he loved was in the thick of things.

And then there's Snape, and Dumbledore—two constants for the better part of his life, both lost protecting him and the school they both loved so very much. With Dumbledore, it's true grief, the loss of a man who was like a grandfather, a mentor. And Snape…

With Snape, it is the loss of possibilities that hurts the most. There was so much unsaid between them, so much that could have been, but old prejudices and new hates smothered all of that. Harry can't help but mourn that loss.

Turn ninety degrees from the rising sun, and then he runs. Four-footed, two-footed, on wings. The empty world stretches out before him, white and grey and brown and green, and Harry matches it—white for the osprey, grey for the wolf, brown for the swift stag, green for the ever-shifting pelt of the quick little fox. South, south, like a migrating bird, but he's not, even if he's finally stopped panicking when someone drops something. He's gone into the towns, as an animal and as a wild-eyed stranger, but they have too many wild-eyed strangers to give him so much as a second glance.

Alaska is a good place to lose yourself.

He marks the sun as he goes, because it is light, and it has been a long while since he thought that, since he saw the rising sun as anything at all. It makes him remember an old wizard in the far north, before he all but ceased his world wanderings, and a prayer he had chanted in the evening to the old gods.

Sól, komðu heil! skínandi í aptan,  
ásynja, agæt ok fögr.  
Í brennanda eldi, björt, vís sigr,  
heil komðu fra himni,  
heil ríð niðr í nótt.

 _Sun, hail to thee! shining in evening,  
far-famed goddess, and fair.  
In burning fire, bright one, show sig.  
holy come you from heaven,  
holy ride down to the dark. _

Chanted, instead of sung, but still beautiful. Perhaps more beautiful, because the only way to hear the music in the words was to hear the words. Harry hadn't stayed long with that wizard—not because there was nothing to learn, nothing to teach, but because there was nothing he _could_ learn, then, nothing he wanted to. Whispers of battle-chants and hymns of blood to warrior gods drove him away, not ready to listen, not ready to hear.

Now, he's a little bit better, a little bit saved, and he can think about war and fighting without drowning, drowning, drowning in his ghosts.

He whispers it now, to himself as he runs.

The run is setting.

Heil ríð niðr í nótt.

 _Holy ride down to the dark._

* * *

It takes days, weeks, but eventually Harry can walk into a town, find an inn, and book a room without giving in to the urge to go four-footed and flee. He can speak to people without seeing flashes of long-departed faces, sleep in a bed and not wake up screaming with terror, hear a plate dropped to the floor without curling up in a corner and shaking.

He remembers what it is to be human and not run on four legs, or fly. He remembers Scott and his offer of haven—not that Harry needs a haven for mutants, but any haven will do. Anywhere he can recover in his slow way, and remember those who were lost, and miss them, but not give in to grief.

He remembers Scott, wonders how he is dealing with his own loss.

Remembers the being by the lake, hungry and sad and angry, and cannot help but shudder at the thought of another death, another killing.

He is glad Scott listened to him and stopped walking.

Harry is still running, now, but it is _to_ something, instead of away. Loss is a good connection, an instant one that Harry knew immediately and instinctively, but he wonders what else they might have in common, when sorrow is pushed away. Nothing, or everything? Very little, or just enough?

Harry finds that he wants to know, even if there is only heartbreak in the end.

* * *

There had been a point, once, when Scott had thought the sun would never rise again, even when it was at its height. Since Jean's death, everything had seemed dull, washed out, like a watercolor painting left out in the rain until only the barest suggestions of colors remained.

He had let it affect him, let it control him and dictate his actions, until a hand on his arm and a sharp, strangely inflected voice had broke through the haze and brought the world back to shuddering, trembling life. Like a man resuscitated, he could suddenly breath again, and his very first lungful of air had come from the lips of a dark-haired stranger not one mile from where the woman he loved more than life had sacrificed herself for all of them.

And yet, somehow, it didn't feel like he was being disloyal. Had Jean lived, and had he died, he would have wished for her happiness above all. He wasn't happy, not yet, but now…

Now he had a feeling that, someday, he could be.

He had left the one who had resurrected him; given them both distance and time to come to terms with what they felt, because while Scott was a mutant, a professor at one of the world's strangest schools, he had never believed in love at first sight.

Somehow, though, that was how the connection translated in his head, in his heart. Perhaps the connection was simply too complex to be defined any other way—that sudden rush of _I feel you, I know your thoughts, I know your heart, but we are strangers_ —and he was interpreting it wrong, but _love_ was the closest he could come to encompassing the idea of instant understanding and connection.

The separation pulls at him, though, tugs at the hole in his heart that is in the shape of green eyes and pale skin and a sharp-boned face, the wry quirk of a brow and the deep pain hidden behind a dip of dusky lashes. He's sure it's two-way, though, because it _has_ to be. He just…never expects it to be resolved like _this_.

They're in battle when it happens. Scott strikes out at Mystique, but she laughs at him, slips away as though her bones are made of rubber, and shifts. He sees the face even before she takes it, red hair and grey eyes, a stern face but beautiful, and pushes down the bite of anger. But it's anger, that the shapeshifter would disrespect a memory this way, instead of sorrow for his loss.

He's moved on.

The love is still there, and it will always be there, but he is just one man with one loss out of many humans with many losses.

A short distance away, Logan bellows with fury and pain, but he's claws-deep in Sabertooth, unable to move. Storm faces Juggernaut, and Iceman stands before Pyro. No one is close enough to switch opponents.

He doesn't need them to.

His hand rises, fingers flying to his visor. _No hesitation, no remorse. It's not her_. And he _knows_ it, knows it to his bones, as well as he knows the exact shade of green that stared at him across a distance of three breaths in a snowy Alaskan forest. The way he remembers the darkness of raven hair sprinkled with fresh-fallen snow, or tanned skin, or a British accent that was so glaringly out of place. Mystique's change, with the ripple and flutter of indigo scales, is nothing in comparison to his memory of a form that changed as smoothly as water flowing, sliding from fox to human to grey wolf as though it were even easier than breathing.

 _Trust yourself to know when you've mourned enough._

And then a roar all but shakes the ground, a sound like something found on the Serengeti, and mountain lion with green eyes tackles Mystique to the ground. She screams as she goes down, form lurching back to blue, and Scott can't blame her—he nearly screamed, as well, before he saw those eyes.

But he remembers the exact shade of green that stared at him across a distance of three breaths, and not even the space of a year will make him forget that.

Instead, he turns away, hand touching his visor, light flashing and catching Juggernaut in the center of the chest. He's not moving, so it works, toppling him back to the earth with a thud that really _does_ shake the ground. Pyro shouts, and so does Iceman, and the lion is gone. A falcon rises in its place, something small and swift— _kestrel_ , Scott's mind supplies, though he can't say how he knows.

The eyes are still green, though, and he holds out one hand. The kestrel alights on his arm, preening slightly, talons digging into the leather of his suit.

"Hello, Harry," Scott says, partly amused and partly wondering. "You decided to take me up on my offer."

The kestrel shoots him a sharp look, then glances away and hisses. Scott looks, too, and sighs. The Brotherhood has gotten away, and from the fading stench of brimstone, Azazel is on the payroll again. He shakes his head and eyes the bird again. "Well, thank you, anyway. I'm sure they'll turn up somewhere."

"You do know that's a bird, right, Slim?" Logan asks dryly, his cigar making its usual miraculous reappearance as he stuffs it in the side of his mouth. Scott spares half a thought to hope he chokes on it.

The kestrel hisses again, a sound Scott didn't know a bird could make, and launches itself off his arm. In midair, that flowing change overtakes it again, and a familiar figure lands lightly on the balls of his feet, already glaring at Wolverine.

Scott falls just a little bit in love with that glare.

"I'm no more a bird than you're a hunk of walking metal," Harry retorts, straightening up. He looks calmer than he did before, more serene, and Scott can't help but remember the Professor's teachings.

 _Find your serenity._

Harry, it seems, has found his.

As those green eyes turn to him, Scott thinks that, just maybe, he has, too.


	3. Chapter 3

_Who can say when the roads meet,_

 _That love might be in your heart_

 _And who can say when the day sleeps_

 _If the night keeps all your heart_

 _Night keeps all your heart_

 _Who can say if your love grows_

 _As your heart chose_

 _Only time_

 _~Enya,_ Only Time

 _Trust yourself to know when you've grieved enough._

 _Time. As much as you need, as long as it's not too much_.

They've said their pieces, really. There's nothing left to work out.

Harry is here because he's done grieving.

Scott welcomes him because he's done grieving.

It's enough. They don't have to say anything.

* * *

They settle into the Blackbird and take flight, and Harry perches on the arm of Scott's chair—first as a blackbird (for irony's sake), then a raven, then a kestrel, then a black cat, then a moon-faced barn owl, and finally settles as a Greater Bird-of-Paradise, like the ones he had seen New Guinea as he passed through. The shape amuses him, makes him think of Fawkes and his beautiful plumage, and it seems to amuse Scott as well, because whenever he doesn't have his hands on the controls, he finds some excuse to run his fingers over Harry's feathers, ghost a touch across his silver-yellow head, down his russet-maroon body, and over the yellow, white, and violet tail feathers.

Harry is happy just to enjoy the touch (warm, and gentle, and really everything he's been missing for the last year—or longer), keep the form, because for all he's been doing well, Scott is hardly the only one around him. The rest are strangers, and while he can deal with that, they are also held close by the cramped interior, which is something Harry _cannot_ deal with. Being an animal makes it seem easier, though, makes it simpler to push through the panic that rises at the thought of closed spaces and the inevitable correlation to the coffins they placed in the ground. The friends who were buried, and shouldn't have been.

He distracts himself, though, watching Scott and the other man interact.

He's scruffy, and smells weird, and drops down into the copilot's chair but makes no move to help fly, and Scott sighs wearily at him but doesn't make him move. Harry lets his feathers bristle just a little bit, because he thinks that Scott is probably a fair judge of character, and everything about him right now is screaming " _Put me out of my misery_."

Harry's not about to oblige him, but if the scruffy man makes one wrong move, Harry won't have any compunctions about jumping in.

"So, Slim." The scruffy man swivels his char to stare intently at Scott, his cigar hanging unlit from the corner of his mouth. Scott looks at him, one eyebrow raised in silent question, and then turns back to his work.

"Yes, Logan?"

"I've been thinking—"

"That never ends well."

Logan looks like he can't decide whether to flip him off or laugh. He settles with a somewhat amused, somewhat derisive snort and plows onward.

"So, Slim, there somethin' goin' on with you an' the bird?"

Harry gives him the look that question deserves. It would probably be more effective if he weren't only a little bigger than the man's hand, but he's not about to waste a transformation on telling off the would-be lumberjack.

 _Again_.

He's not a _bird_ , damn it.

Scott seems to have similar feelings. He stares at Logan for a moment, then shakes his head with something like pity or disgust or a combination of the two and starts them on their descent. Behind him, the white-haired woman smothers a chuckle, and the blond boy winces.

Were they visible, Harry is fairly certain that Scott's eyes would be rolling.

The Blackbird sinks down below the basketball court, which closes over them, and Harry shifts again—a russet fox this time, as red as Ron's hair—jumping down from the arm of the chair and picking his way towards the doors. Scott follows quickly, as though they're joined by an invisible rope, and as soon as they're on the ground in the hangar, Harry lets the changes fade away.

Scott smiles at him, and though Harry can't see his eyes, his face is warm.

"Staying for a while?" he asks, as though the answer isn't already obvious.

Harry, too, answers as though it isn't. "A while," he agrees, and it really does sound like "forever."

Scott holds out a hand, and Harry takes it, and they walk into the school as though they are a single entity.

Harry's somehow rather sure they are.

* * *

It's so astonishingly _simple_. They're strangers, and then they're acquaintances, and then they're friends, and then they're _more_. Like climbing down a ladder in the dark, one more step, one more change, obvious and _there_ and clear even when it's invisible. Scott's not sure it's ever been like this before, for _anyone_ , _ever_ , and he finds himself a little bit in awe of it.

When they get to the school, Scott goes to report to the Professor, and Harry comes with him. He smiles at Xavier, as though they're sharing a secret, and the Professor smiles back just a little, eyes kind.

There's no mention of it made, no formal announcement, but Harry stays.

He's just…there. When Scott wakes up in the morning, Harry is right where he was the night before, curled against Scott like a drowning man clings to a lifesaver. Nothing's happened between them yet, barely more than a few chaste kisses here and there. Still, in Scott's mind it's already a permanent thing, like the sun rising and the earth spinning and Logan being an asshole. Were they normal, were it legal, Scott would already be going to one knee and promising forever.

He gets the feeling that Harry wouldn't say no.

Harry murmurs something in his dreams, and Scott—usually up before dawn, completing his daily training, eating a good breakfast and bucking down on work—can't bring himself to crawl out of bed. Not if it means leaving Harry and the warmth that surrounds him and the smell of pine that clings to him, as though he's brought a piece of Alaska with him.

It's different than it was with Jean, even more so in the fact that he has no idea what "it" is. _Love_ , he wants to say, but too much, too soon. _Lust_ , he wants to say, but that's not right either. _Connection_ , he wants to say, but that's too little, too late.

This is something else now, and even if it doesn't have a name, it has him, and Harry, and that's enough to make it complete.

They need no words, no anything, and Scott can only think of one thing to encompass them.

 _This is the way the world ends_

 _This is the way the world ends_

 _This is the way the world ends_

 _Not with a bang but a whimper._

Scott's previous world has ended, and he did not even hear it fade.

He mourns for it, just a little, but he's happy, too.

A new world waits.

He wraps his arms a little tighter around Harry and lets the day pass them by. It's Sunday, the sky is bright with sunshine, and Scott is content.

 _Not with a bang but a whimper._

One world is gone, but there are so many more stretching out before them.

* * *

"You and Slim, huh? How's that work? Does he pull that massive stick out of his ass when you're screwing?"

Harry wants to be mortified. He wants to turn beet-red and glare at Logan with all the ire that wounded dignity and pride can afford him.

He wants to, but unfortunately questions like these have become so commonplace that he barely raises an eyebrow. His gaze never wavers from his book on the rituals of Mithraism and their contrast with those of other Persian-based religions exported to Rome.

Merlin. He's worse than Hermione, really.

"Oh, _gross_." Bobby—Iceman—turns on his heel and marches right back out of the kitchen. "That's _disgusting_ , Wolverine. Why do you want to know that? God, I'm scarred for life!"

Logan snorts and pours himself a cup of coffee that seems more like a small bucket, and keeps his gaze on Harry. "So?"

Harry lifts his head long enough to give him a flat look and says, "So this is the girl's dorm now, is it? We'll talk about our sex lives, discuss our feelings and all that? Maybe when we're done we can braid each other's hair."

The grin he gets in response is feral, with far too many teeth to be as harmless as Logan probably wants it to look. "Hey, Princess, if you're gunnin' for a sleepover, you'll have to go to your boy toy for that. I don't swing that way."

In all actuality, neither does Harry. He really thinks he's more asexual than anything. What he has with Scott…well, that's more of a Scott-and-Harry thing than a gay-or-straight thing.

 _For love is love, no matter whence it comes or in what form_.

That, Harry thinks, smiling into his cup of tea, is one proverb the Portuguese got very, very right.

And this form, what he has with Scott, is something special. He knows that in the same way he knows air is for breathing and water is not, or that lightning is attracted to metal and Dumbledore was a good man. Simply knowing Scott leaving him at ease. There have been no more panic attacks when he spends his days around the professor, no more nightmares where he wakes screaming so long as he passes the night curled close in Scott's warm bed.

Logan's still watching him, but Harry, feeling at peace with the world and rather generous, goes back to his book and takes a sip of Earl Grey. There's a bit of wickedness in his smile, when it comes.

His father was a Marauder, after all.

"Yes, Scott and I," he answers, thinking of the original question. "For your information, it works quite well, and in regards to the stick, I wouldn't know." He flashes a bland smile at Logan, collects his book and tea, and stands. "Scott's not the one taking it up the arse, luv. And with his size, I'm not about to ask him. Hung like a horse, he is. Bottoming's really quite fun. You should try it sometime, Wolverine, but with your own boy toy, rather than mine."

The sound of choking comes from two directions at once. Harry casts another bland look at Logan, a kind smile at his lover, and strides calmly out the door.

Scott and Logan stare at each other in mute horror. There are no words, not in all the languages on Earth, and Scott buries his face in his hands with a groan.

Mortification. That's all that he can feel.

It's little consolation that Logan seems to be feeling the same.

After several long moments, Logan clears his throat and tries for a joke. "Hey, forget it, Slim. Someday we'll all—"

"Look back on this, cringe in horror, and shoot whoever brought it up?"

"Yeah, I'll go with that."

* * *

Scott recovers, eventually. After a while he and Logan even manage to meet each other's eyes. Harry just smiles at them whenever they're in a room together, like a private joke—and Scott's rather certain that he doesn't want to get it.

But Harry smiling is good, and Scott thinks he'll suffer any embarrassment if it keeps that expression on his face.

There's no doubt now, if there ever was. Harry whispers the words to him as they walk to Scott's next class, sweet and smiling, and somehow, Scott couldn't imagine a more perfect setting.

" _I love you_."

It's ridiculously easy for him to whisper it back.

" _I love you, too_."

Simple words really are the best.

* * *

Some souls are made broken, and the pieces have to find each other before they can be whole. They're the ones who are fated, born for each other and no one else; the ones fate can't seem to touch.

Other souls break in the process of living, and must find another who is similarly broken before they can even think of becoming whole again. It's a change of fate, for them, to find the one person whose jagged cracks and flat lines even somewhat complement their own, and they seem to re-break easily, even after they've come together.

Then there are the rare, rare souls who are not born to complement another, who break. And when they break, when their edges shatter from the blunt trauma of simply living, they just happen to break in the exact way that complements someone else perfectly, as though they were born for each other from the very beginning.

The last are the ones who truly withstand fate, in all its guises.

* * *

Scott and Harry are the third, edges lining up even though they were not fated to, bodies fitting together so perfectly that there is not an inch of contention between them. They have their differences, of course, and their arguments, but no matter what happens, none of their edges crack. None of their lines bend. They remain for each other, of each other, a pair and a partnership and bonded through everything.

They never say "soul mates," because that implies something more than chance, something very much like destiny, and they've both had far too much of that in their lives. No, their meeting, their encounter was noting more than happenstance, despite cliché titles and facetious remarks from those who see them together.

It's absolutely ridiculous, when Harry really considers it. Out of all the seven billion people in the world—and counting—he and Scott managed to find each other. They gave each other time, and they healed, and they healed each other in way they could have never managed alone.

Harry thinks about the lake and how close Scott was to walking to his death, how close he himself came to being killed by Voldemort so many times, and knows that if there were ever miracles in this strange, beautiful, achingly imperfect world, he's found one.

Scott wanders into their room, carrying a cup of coffee, his hair sleepily tousled, and he smiles at Harry through the rising steam from his mug.

Harry returns the smile, and goes to kiss his miracle.


End file.
